Losing Patients: Blind people call for health information they can read.
Eighty people packed into Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind to launch Losing Patients - a campaign to help blind and partially sighted people secure accessible information from the NHS. Local MPs Nick Clegg and Richard Cabourn gave powerful speeches of support following an impassioned testimony from Sheffield resident Sarah Bryan.
Sarah Bryan, 25 is registered blind. She told of how following a cervical smear test at her GP surgery, a nurse offered to send her results in braille. Three weeks later she was told a standard print letter would be posted which she could ask someone else to read to her.
A month after the test, and after several hours of frustrating phone calls, she finally received her results by email. "A sighted patient would have received the results within a fortnight". She concluded "chasing my results was extremely stressful and time-consuming. I was becoming angrier by the minute at the lack of accessibility to visually impaired patients. I received congratulations cards in braille from friends when I got married in 2008, why can't I get information from health services?"
Disability leads attended the launch from Sheffield Primary Care Trust and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. During questions and answers they explained "progress had been made to address these problems but more needed to be done".
Both MPs committed to take the health research back to their front benches with Richard Cabourn announcing he would pass the report to Minister for Health Andy Burnham.
What you can do…
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